Formed composite parts are commonly used in applications, such as aircraft and vehicles, where lightweight and high strength are desired. Thermoplastic and fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite structures and parts are used in a wide variety of applications, including in the manufacture of aircraft, space craft, rotorcraft, watercraft, automobiles, trucks, and other vehicles and structures, due to their high strength-to-weight ratios, corrosion resistance, and other favorable properties. In aircraft manufacturing and assembly, such thermoplastic and fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite structures and parts are used in increasing quantities to form the fuselage, wings, tail section, skin panels, and other components. However, the use of thermoplastic composite materials in the design and manufacture of tubular cylindrical and non-cylindrical structures, such as tubes, pipes, ducts, conduits, and elongate hollow components, for use in aircraft or other applications, may be difficult due to tooling removal, the size of the part, processing temperature, outer surface dimensional tolerances, fiber alignment, and other processing challenges.
Although known methods exist for fabricating tubular cylindrical and non-cylindrical structures from thermoset composite materials and from aluminum and titanium metal materials, there are certain drawbacks to using these materials. For example, the use of thermoset composite materials may require long cure cycles, e.g., 4 hours to 24 hours or more, due to the crosslinking that the thermoset composite materials undergo, and longer cure cycles may result in increased manufacturing time, and in turn, increased manufacturing costs. The use of metal materials may result in an overall increased weight of the aircraft or other mechanism using the finished part, which, in turn, may result in increased fuel and operational costs, especially during aircraft flight. Moreover, the use of titanium metal materials may result in increased manufacturing costs due to the high cost of such titanium metal materials. Accordingly, the use of thermoplastics provides a desirable, less costly alternative for use in the fabrication of components that are used in the manufacture of a variety apparatus that need strong lightweight components.
One such apparatus that benefits from strong lightweight components is a wind turbine. Wind turbines have become an important source of energy in recent years. To increase the efficiency of the wind turbine many wind turbines are designed to be several hundred feet in height and may have blades that are over one hundred feet in length. As a result, facilities utilized to fabricate wind turbines, and especially wind turbine blades are relatively large. To a large extent the size of these facilities is driven by both the actual size of the finished wind turbine blade and also the long cycle time associated with the manufacture of the blade when fabricated from composite materials. These long cycle times are a direct result of both the lay-up and curing of the wind blade. More specifically, the length of time currently required to lay-up and cure a conventional wind turbine blade is significant. Thus, to meet current demands for wind turbines, manufacturers have been increasing the size of the production facilities to enable more blades to be fabricated concurrently. However, rather than building larger production facilities, it would desirable to reduce the time required to fabricate a wind turbine blade, such that an increased quantity of turbine blades may be manufactured without enlarging the production facility.
Accordingly, there is a need for fabricating wind turbine blades using thermoplastic materials that provide advantages over known structures and methods.